eaving the vehicle to follow the road, which zig-zags up to the
summit, addressed ourselves to the old route, which winds steeply
upward, now through forests of stunted firs, now over a matting of
thick, short grass, and now over the bare debris-strewn scalp of the
mountain. The convent bells followed us with their sweet chimes up the
hill, and formed a link between us and the living world below. The
echoes of our voices were strangely loud. They rung out in the thin
elastic air, as if all we said had been caught up and repeated by some
invisible being,--some genius of the mountains. The hours wore away; and
so delighted were we with the novelty of our position,--climbing the
summits of the Alps at midnight,--that they seemed but so many minutes.

Ere we were aware, the night was past, and the dawn came upon us; and
with the dawn, new and stupendous glories burst forth. How fresh and
holy the young day, as it drew aside the curtains of the east, and
smiled upon the mountains! The valleys were buried under a fathomless
ocean of haze; but the pearly light, sown by the rosy hand of morn,
fringed the mountain ridges, and a multitudinous sea of silvery waves
spread out around us. The dawn stole on, waxing momentarily; and the
great white Alps, which had been standing all night around us so silent,
and cold, and sepulchral-like, in their snowy shrouds, now began to grow
palpable and less dream-like. The stars put out their fires as the pure
crystal light mounted into the sky. Each successive scene was
lovely,--inexpressibly lovely,--but momentary. We wished we could have
stereotyped it till we had had time to admire it; but while we were
gazing it had passed and was gone, like the other glories of the world.
But, lo! the sun is near. Mighty torch-bearers run before his chariot,
and cry to the rocks, the pine-forests, the torrents, the glaciers, the
vine-clad vales, the flower-enamelled glades, the rivers, the cities,
that their king is coming. Awake and worship! A mighty Alp, whose
loftier stature or more favourable position gives it the start of all
the others, has caught the first ray; and suddenly, as if an invisible
hand had kindled it, it rises into the firmament, a pyramid of flame,
soft, mild, yet gloriously bright, like a dome of living sapphire. While
you gaze, another flashes upon you, and another, and another, and at
length the whole horizon is filled with gigantic pyres. The stupendous
vision has risen so suddenly,